Let\u2019s not kid ourselves, the state of SEO 4+ years ago was laughable, a joke, if you will. Google\u2019s own search results were so easily manipulated with \u201cbacklink packages\u201d and the like that it was straightforward to a fault to get a new site ranking, even for a competitive keyword, provided you had the money (or the time).<\/p>\n

Over the past few years, Google \u2013 and other search engines, too! \u2013 has wised up and started making it more difficult to game the system. While some lamented the downfall of blackhat, spammy techniques, it was a game that was doomed from the beginning, and an equal number of people recognized the value in Google\u2019s new incarnation.<\/p>\n

Right now, the social and link cues that tell Google a page is important and relevant are more closely aligned than ever with the actual relevance and genuine popularity of that page. This has been Google\u2019s goal for years, so it\u2019s no surprised that they\u2019ve worked extremely hard to move this direction as quickly as possible. I\u2019m sure they\u2019re quite happy with themselves, and they should be.<\/p>\n

Is there still some way to game the system? I\u2019m sure, but it\u2019s not worth it, because every loophole gets closed, and at a rate that is gaining speed with every single day.<\/p>\n

So, if the old kinds of link building aren\u2019t effective, what does work?<\/p>\n

Social cues are big.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Social media is the currency of a generation right now, and content that is blowing up with links, likes, shares, and retweets on social media is going to make a blip on Google\u2019s radar. Google knows that these are often real indicators of people thinking something is valuable and worthwhile, and they\u2019re all about that positive end user experience.<\/p>\n

Leverage and squeeze every drop out of your social networks. Repurpose your tweets and posts to help appeal to different people and at different times. Try scheduling posts to go out on social at various times of day, with different images, and try alternating your headline with a quote from within the page itself.<\/p>\n

Mobile is king, for now.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While we can\u2019t know exactly what the future holds, one thing is for sure: Google is big on the mobile trend. It\u2019s for good reason, too, seeing that internet usage on phones has skyrocketed over the past few years, meaning that websites who are responsive to various screen sizes and who don\u2019t have a crappy mobile experience are going to be rightfully propped up in the search results.
This trend is also true of tablets, and any new device that comes out and begins to gain popularity.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t stop building links.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Backlinks are still a big deal, but the focus now is on the quality of the links you\u2019re bringing in. When it comes to lone links with suspiciously consistent anchor text, your efforts are going to get ignored at best or earn you a penalized site at worst. Instead, focus on building contextual links through creating products and services so good other people write about you, through stellar guest posting gigs, and by leveraging the press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s not kid ourselves, the state of SEO 4+ years ago was laughable, a joke, if you will. Google\u2019s own search results were so easily manipulated with \u201cbacklink packages\u201d and the like that it was straightforward to a fault to get a new site ranking, even for a competitive keyword, provided you had the money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":98,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,36,37],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-8115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linking","category-marketing","category-seo","tag-online-advertising"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezisell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezisell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezisell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezisell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezisell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ezisell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezisell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezisell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezisell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}